Fudging Numbers: Housing Edition

In the following video, Motley Fool financial analyst Matt Koppenheffer discusses one potentially worrying metric for the housing recovery. He takes a look at the "Calculated Risk" blog, where Bill McBride focuses on a Business Insider article that featured a graph showing that "housing completions" have been outpacing "new home sales" over the past 12 months.

Matt tells us who should be worried, if it's true. He also points out that "housing completions" isn't the right thing to compare "new home sales" to in order to get an accurate picture of housing sales today.

One of the major mortgage lenders that would suffer if this ratio proved true is Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo's dedication to solid, conservative banking helped it vastly outperform its peers during the financial meltdown. Today, Wells is the same great bank as ever, but with its stock trading at a premium to the rest of the industry, is there still room to buy, or is it time to cash in your gains? To help figure out whether Wells Fargo is a buy today, I invite you to download our premium research report from one of The Motley Fool's top banking analysts. Click here now for instant access to this in-depth take on Wells Fargo.